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History

John King was an extremely successful business man and the third richest man in America, with only Bruce Wayne and Lex Luthor with more money to their names. On the surface, John King appeared to be a humanitarian who used his billions to travel from city to city, rejuvenating and improving their conditions with the goal of saving lives, but he was secretly gaining control of crime and using his charity to indenture the citizens of those cities to his will as servants of The King. When he moved to Seattle, he was almost mugged and was saved by Green Arrow. Seeing that the hero had intentionally missed taking a fatal shot to incapacitate the mugger, King was inspired to give Seattle the hero he believed it deserved, instead of the coward he perceived Green Arrow to be, and began plotting to make Seattle his next major renovation. He was confronted by his wife, and in order to ensure his secret remained from the public, he overpowered and stabbed her to death on their kitchen table, an act that was witnessed by their young daughter, Mia Dearden. [1]

His daughter escaped with a flashdrive containing evidence against him collected by his wife, and a list of names of every person in The King's employ, forcing him to send men to look for her. Knowing that these actions would draw the ire of Green Arrow, King had someone hire Felicity Smoak to lead the hero to a cleared out warehouse, where a large number of his men would ambush and murder him, while he began to personally torture his way to learning where his daughter was hiding. [2]

Maintaining the appearance of a humanitarian billionaire, King made a televised speech about his funding of new communities to improve the quality of living outside of Seattle. He declined any comment on his potential mayoral candidacy, but made a point to order his men to round up a journalist who had asked about his connections with Carmine Falcone and murder them. When it was reported that the intervention of Mack Morgan had caused The King's men to lose Mia, and Smoak had betrayed them to work with the Arrow, King merely ordered they hire Merlyn, first to assassinate the man that had made the mistake of talking him into hiring Felicity over Merlyn to begin with, and then to hunt down both Mia and Green Arrow. [3]

When Merlyn engaged Queen on the City Center Mono-Rail, The King called the police sergeant on the scene, one of the countless in his pocket, and ordered him to keep the rest of the police from helping the hero. Despite his best attempts to stack the odds against Green Arrow, Merlyn disengaged, allowing the hero to escape with Mia. Having long since learned that Green Arrow was actually Oliver Queen, King sent Oliver an invitation to a fundraiser on his private blimp, where Queen intended to confront him. Believing he had Oliver out-played, King sent orders to all of his men, sending a squad to kidnap Mia from Zehra Darvish's home, and dropping Oliver, Felicity and Diggle from his blimp, intending to see them fall to their deaths. He was surprised to see that instead, Oliver had called in a favor to Green Lantern, who arrived to catch them. [4]

While King sent one of his subjects in powered armor to distract Oliver and Jordan, he returned to interrogate his captive daughter, demanding to know what information Morgan had passed to her before Merlyn's successful assassination of the man. When Mia responded to his questions by spitting in his face, King decided to switch up his tactics, and showed his daughter live footage of Zehra on his phone, strung up by wire and threatened with death if Mia didn't comply with his wishes. Believing that his daughter and any evidence against him were secure, King decided to move on Oliver on live television; bribing the Police Chief of the Seattle PD to announce Green Arrow as Seattle's public enemy number one, while King personally decided to put a five million dollar hit on the vigilante, open to anyone willing to bring him to justice, swiftly turning the people of Seattle against Green Arrow. While the crowds began to turn on Queen, King decided to visit the still captive Zehra, and began to torture her with a cutting saw.[5] Over the course of the night, King succeeded in breaking her and turning Zehra into one of his servants. Now complying with King's master plan, Zehra liquidated the Queen Foundation Endowment and transferred the money to King's own Kingdom housing operation. With Oliver bankrupt, King began to move his plans to isolate the Green Arrow from his friends and allies, starting by tipping off the police to Felicity's location and bribing the police to ensure she'd never see proper trial, sending her straight to Supermax. While Oliver launched a sneak attack on Supermax to break-in and rescue her, King decided to take Mia out to the Kingdom project in-progress, hoping that seeing his construction would inspire her to love him. He became incensed when she instead, only argued with him on his attempts to murder a hospital full of innocent people, and compared him to Hitler. [6]

When Oliver, having successfully rescued Felicity and assembled a small army of allied heroes, began to assault King's offices directly to reclaim the information from Mia's flashdrive, King became desperate and threatened to murder Mia at the Kingdom project site if Queen didn't deliver the files to him. Oliver, not willing to sacrifice her life, followed to the site to save her. King and Queen engaged in a brief hand-to-hand fight, where King attempted to cut Oliver down with a sword- but Queen proved to be more than a match, easily disarming King and knocking him aside with a flare arrow. Not finished, King reminded Oliver that he believed everyone had a price, cuing Mia to shoot the hero from behind- however, Mia quickly revealed this to be a bluff to try and get her father's gun so she could kill him personally, intentionally shooting Queen harmlessly in the Kevlar vest. Recovering from the shot, Queen rolled upwards and shot John King three times, in both shoulders and in the knee, leaving him for the police while sending Mia's data to Batman, who used it to tip off authorities to King's past actions, implicated him in dozens of murders and track thousands of bribes to public officials, ensuring that King would receive a hefty prison sentence while tearing his Kingdom apart, as his supporters were forced to flee the country or face arrest as well. [7]